Speaking Of Firsts…

Posted by gregg on Apr 8, 2010 in Uncategorized | 5 comments

I was catching up with some friends this weekend when they asked me, “When did you know you wanted to be a musician?” I instantly recalled the key moments, that all worked together to put me on that path.

The first time I saw Ray Charles singing “It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Green” on Sesame Street (or maybe it was The Muppet Show) it absolutely floored me, even at seven years old. To me, there has always been a quality to Ray’s voice that somehow pins me back in my chair.

A year or so later, when I first heard the opening notes of “Purple Haze” at summer camp, I broke out into a cold sweat. One of the kids had taken his brother’s boombox for the day and a tape of Jimi Hendrix was in it. I remember thinking, “What is THIS?!” It just blew me away. I wanted to hear it again and again. We must’ve listened to “Purple Haze” about forty times that day, just rewinding it and playing it again, until the tape broke.

I think before I made the declaration I wanted to be a musician, I first decided I was going to grow up and be black. Then I made two shocking discoveries. First, I would never be black. And second, that my father’s dusty record collection actually had ROCK records in it! Namely, The Steve Miller Band “Fly Like An Eagle”; Fleetwood Mac “Rumours”; The Eagles “Hotel California” and The Beatles “Rubber Soul”.

Suddenly, white people could floor me with their voices and musicianship too, and all was well. I wore those four records out that year, and to this day, I can trace nearly every song I write back to those early days hovering over my father’s turntable. He has since told me that all of these particular album purchases were made at the suggestion of a young accountant at his office. I will never know his name, but in a strange way, he was instrumental in directing the course of my life. I owe him a kick in the groin. Anyway…

When I was 10, with my very own money I bought my very first 45 (Record, not Colt). Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock-N-Roll”. My first crush, and possibly the only boyhood crush I ever had. (I have manhood crushes almost daily, but as for boyhood crushes, it was just Joan.)

But… The moment that sealed the deal was the night I visited my friend Roy on his father’s houseboat on the Hackensack River. After dinner we stole a few beers from his father’s ice cooler and took his rowboat down the river and stopped at the old Carlstadt water tower.

I was deathly afraid of heights, but Roy convinced me to climb the tower anyway. From up there you could hear Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band playing a sold-out show across the Meadowlands at Giants Stadium. The sound was amazing as it traveled across the wide expanse of reeds and up and over Route 3. It was there I drank my first beer listening to that sound, and I remember making a promise to myself that night that I would become a musician and write songs.

So there it is. And now, with the miracle that is YouTube, you can experience a little piece of my childhood too. Enjoy…

Ray Charles “It Ain’t Easy Bein Green”. His voice is a kind of dull needle that pushes into my chest and just pins me in place. I can’t move until he stops singing. I want to know if this happens to anyone else? Or, maybe with a different singer?

Jimi Hendrix “Purple Haze”. Listen to how fluid he was. This is what they mean when they say the guitar was like an extra appendage to him.

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts “I Love Rock-N-Roll”. Oh… so gorgeous. She rocks. She’s got the perfect attitude and look for rock-n-roll. She was beautiful and just a little dangerous. Like Elvis, only a little more beautiful and little more dangerous. This is such a classic. She was exceptional at making cover songs her own too.

Steve Miller Band “The Joker”. Dude was cool. Always reminded me of guitar-slingin’ Bill Murray. And to all those people who say there’s no such word as ‘pompatus’… Well, there wasn’t until the Space Cowboy sang it! (By the way, Steve got the word from Vernon Green when it was ‘puppetutes’. And who knows what that means. Green says it has something to do with having sex with paper dolls, but he’s f@#$ing crazy.)

Fleetwood Mac “Rhiannon”. Stick with it until the end. That band rocked. Stevie was phenomenal and super cute too. So was Lindsey for that matter.

The Eagles “Hotel California”. When I think of vinyl records, smooth black and grooved, the slow spinning circles, the needle, the static… I think of this album. I listened to it literally hundreds of times. I have a friend who calls the lyrics a bad Twilight Zone episode on pot. But, when you’re driving through the desert (say, westbound Route 40 out of Needles) it all makes sense. It’s real. And the dueling guitar solos are pretty bad-ass too.

The Beatles “Norwegian Wood“. There’s not much to say about this band that hasn’t already been said ten-thousand times, but one thing I always appreciated about The Beatles is that they knew how to laugh and make fun of themselves. Every band takes themselves so seriously today (yes, us included). We need more Ringo moments in music.

Bruce Springsteen “Thunder Road”. In my book, he’s the greatest singer / songwriter / performer of all time. I can’t think of another artist who can do all three. There are plenty out there that can do two, but not all three. He’s the whole package.

OK, hope that was as fun for you as it was for me.